Arts + Life

A Gift Of Life And Friendship After A Family's Loss

editor — Fri, 17 May 2013 07:06:00 +0000

Today, Rick Bounds is a 58-year-old triathlete, with four competitions and a 100-mile bike ride to his credit.

But six years ago, he was diagnosed with a nonhepatitis liver disease. Rick's doctors told him that if he didn't have an immediate kidney and liver transplant, he would die.

He was given eight months to live and told that his chances of getting organs were slim.

'No Hope'

"I woke up my husband. I said, 'Baby, you've got to get up,' " says 50-year-old Dorothy Biernack. "He had a construction company.

While The Audience Turned Away, 'American Idol' Found Some Great Singers

Linda Holmes — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:04:46 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMet8T87JU8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-aAwKQ2CMQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp1x6Mbs5SA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beUD20VZ8Fg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64S5Rn9mlxs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRTVnSioKDQ

A Farewell To 'The Office': The 10 Best Episodes

Linda Holmes — Thu, 16 May 2013 20:39:25 +0000

It really only hit yesterday: It's the end of The Office.

After nine seasons, Dunder Mifflin is going dark Thursday night, with an hour-long retrospective at 8:00 and a 75-minute episode at 9:00 that may or may not feature a cameo from Steve Carell.

From The Heart Of Egypt's Revolt, The Pulse Of Artistic Life

Leila Fadel — Thu, 16 May 2013 19:39:00 +0000

Egypt's capital, Cairo, is now synonymous with protests and sometimes violence. Late at night, the once-bustling downtown streets are largely empty these days.

Stay-At-Home Dads, Breadwinner Moms and Making It All Work

Jennifer Ludden — Wed, 15 May 2013 09:32:00 +0000

The next time you see a father out shopping with his kids, you might need to check your assumptions.

"I'll get the, 'Oh, look, it's a dad! That's so sweet!' "says Jonathan Heisey-Grove, a stay-at-home father of two young boys in Alexandria, Va., who is pretty sure the other person assumes he's just giving Mom a break for the day.

Why Angelina Jolie's Op-Ed Matters

Linda Holmes — Tue, 14 May 2013 16:22:00 +0000

Pop culture does not mean celebrity culture; I have perhaps said this more often than anyone you're going to meet. Who dates, who gets a divorce, who has a tantrum, who has surreptitious photos snapped of him by mangy, grim opportunists — these things are not culture of any kind, popular or otherwise, unless there is something else at stake. They are curiosities, and given that we are curious creatures, their pull is not surprising, nor is it new, nor was it invented by the internet, or television, or Americans.

Banksy Mural May Be Coming To U.S. After All

editor — Sun, 12 May 2013 19:05:00 +0000

You might remember the story of the uproar earlier this year over a piece of art by the mysterious graffiti artist Banksy that disappeared from its home on a wall in north London and ended up on the auction block in Miami.

That auction was canceled, and residents of Haringey Borough, the area from which the mural disappeared, were j

Jacob & Sophia Rule Among Baby Names, Liz & Liam Are Hot

Mark Memmott — Fri, 10 May 2013 13:44:00 +0000

If this was a contest, some might call for the name Jacob to be retired after so many wins.

According to the Social Security Administration:

"Jacob and Sophia are repeat champions as America's most popular baby names for 2012. This is the fourteenth year in a row Jacob tops the list for boys and the second year for Sophia."

Rounding out the top 10 lists:

Girls / Boys
2. Emma / Mason
3. Isabella / Ethan
4.

We Get Mail: How Can A Vinyl Lover Start Over From Scratch?

Stephen Thompson — Fri, 10 May 2013 13:37:09 +0000

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and amid the ironic promotional cassingles is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, how a regretful fan of vinyl records can re-create her discarded collection.

Kirsten Elbourne Mathieson writes: "I'm big-time regretting getting rid of all of my record albums years ago. Any advice for someone starting from scratch with vinyl after all these years?

Preserving The Motherhood Advice And Memories Of A Mom

NPR Staff — Fri, 10 May 2013 02:03:00 +0000
In 2008, Rebecca Posamentier visited StoryCorps with her mother, Carol Kirsch.
"My mom was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's, and I was hoping to get her voice and her thoughts on tape before she couldn't express them anymore," Posamentier said recently during a second visit to StoryCorps.
Kirsch died in March 2011, but during that first visit, Posamentier chatted with her mother about well, motherhood.
"Um, Mom was very insecure, because she had polio as a child, and she had a limp for pretty much all her life," Kirsch said about her own mother.

At The Met Ball, Those Are Some Crazy Dresses

Linda Holmes — Thu, 09 May 2013 16:49:42 +0000
Monday night was the big night for unusual dresses (you may remember a previous post about Madonna's bunny ears): the Costume Institute Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, known as the "Met Ball." It had a loose punk theme (because the costume exhibit it's celebrating is punk-centric), but everyone got up to quite a bit of her own thing.

Shut The Door, Have A Suite: 'Mad Men' Steps It Up

Linda Holmes — Thu, 09 May 2013 16:43:39 +0000
[CAUTION: This is all about Sunday night's Mad Men. Obviously, if you haven't seen Sunday night's Mad Men and you still intend to, you might hold off.]
It's reductive to conclude that on far too many episodes of Mad Men, nothing happens. Of course something always happens: someone feels something, or learns something, or is locked in a continuous internal struggle with something. A dynamic continues to simmer, a memory comes to the surface, angels and demons battle for somebody's soul.
But it can feel a lot like nothing happens.

Remembering Monster-Maker Ray Harryhausen

editor — Thu, 09 May 2013 16:20:00 +0000
Ray Harryhausen, who died Tuesday in London at age 92, became fascinated with animation after seeing King Kong in 1933. He went on to create some of the most memorable monsters of old Hollywood, from dinosaurs to mythological creatures.
His monsters, however, were never completely divorced from the real world.
"I do a lot of research when I create a creature," he told Fresh Air's Terry Gross in 2003. "I like to make him logical.

In France, A Renewed Push To Return Art Looted By Nazis

Eleanor Beardsley — Wed, 08 May 2013 15:37:00 +0000
During World War II, the Nazis plundered tens of thousands of works of art from the private collections of European Jews, many living in France. About 75 percent of the artwork that came back to France from Germany at the end of the war has been returned to their rightful owners.
But there are still approximately 2,000 art objects that remain unclaimed.

'Show Boat' Steams On, Eternally American

Nina Totenberg — Tue, 07 May 2013 21:26:00 +0000
It's been more than eight decades since Show Boat -- the seminal masterpiece of the American musical theater — premiered on a stage in Washington, D.C. Now the sprawling classic is back, in a lush production put on by the Washington National Opera.
Based on Edna Ferber's epic best-selling novel, Show Boat was nothing like the frothy musicals and scantily clad Broadway revues of its time.

Things Come (Very, Very) Apart

Coburn Dukehart — Tue, 07 May 2013 15:43:27 +0000
Todd McLellan must have a lot of fun at his job.
How else to explain someone who meticulously dismantles, then painstakingly rearranges hundreds of tiny parts of machinery. And that's before he throws everything into the air.
The Toronto-based commercial photographer was the kind of kid who always took things apart, including an entire 1985 Hyundai Pony in secondary school.

Crowd Funding Effort Seeks To Save Venice's Everyday Gondolas

Christopher Livesay — Tue, 07 May 2013 15:38:00 +0000
Even if you haven't been to Venice, you're probably familiar with the city's famous tourist gondolas: With baroque silver ornaments, shiny black lacquer, and sumptuous red seat cushions, they're unabashedly fancy, not to mention ubiquitous. A ride with a gondolier costs at least 80 euros (about $105), rain or shine (and it's 110 — $144 — more to be serenaded).
But there's another kind of gondola — a much simpler breed called a traghetto. There's no fancy ornamentation, no soundtrack, and instead of one gondolier, there are two.

A 'Decadent And Depraved' Derby With Hunter S. Thompson

editor — Sat, 04 May 2013 16:07:00 +0000
In the spring of 1970, a British illustrator named Ralph Steadman had just moved to America, hoping to find some work. His first call came from a small literary journal called Scanlan's. It was looking for a cartoonist to send to the Kentucky Derby. Steadman had heard of neither the race nor the writer he was to accompany, a fellow named Hunter S.

Ohio Movie House Screens Its Last Reel-To-Reel

NPR Staff — Wed, 01 May 2013 00:01:00 +0000
It's the end of an era at the Little Art Theatre in Yellow Springs, Ohio. On Tuesday, the theater will run its old, 35 mm film projector for the last time. Then, starting Wednesday, it will close for several months to install an expensive new digital projection system.
The Little Art's conversion comes in response to a sweeping mandate from big Hollywood studios that all of the country's theaters — big and small — convert to digital.

When It Comes To Productivity, Technology Can Hurt And Help

Yuki Noguchi — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 07:07:00 +0000
Even when people think they're buckling down, studies show the average office worker wastes over a third of the day. There's Facebook, of course, and the email from a friend with a YouTube link.